Family ~ Bullshit Busters ~ Part II

So…yesterday’s blog on family touched a nerve, a nerve so sensitive that the dialogue happened behind the scenes exclusively through text and email for privacy’s sake. No one wanted to offend anyone or open up a giant can of whoop-ass. I love that I have such a troll-free readership.
 

But believe me, I get it.

Many of you felt that I let family “off the hook” so to speak, and you felt obligated to weigh in.
Thank you. There is always another side to a coin. A different story to tell.

Some family members can behave hatefully and do real damage, and they absolutely, positively, do NOT have your best interest at heart. Since that has not been the case for me recently with my immediate blood family (I did have a wicked step-mother once-upon-a-time), I can’t speak to that—but you can.

After going back and forth on email, I asked this reader if I could please, please, pretty please, share their initial comment with the rest of you because it sort of summed up what everyone else was saying with a minimum of profanity and exclamation points!  And they agreed—just as long as they could maintain their anonymity.

So, here you go. Another, (and seemingly more common) view on family, bullshit-busting, motives, and friends.

Let me know what you think.
Carry on,
xox

I agree with you on many things and always respect your opinion, but I am not with you on this one.

I have found that very rarely are family members good arbiters of “bullshit”. Most of the time they act like wackos and their past experiences with you are tainted (and tinted by a filter) due to years of interlocking neurosis.

Oh, they will take you down a notch (or twelve) but do they have a better grasp of what is reality or the real you?

Do they really know you now? How much have they grown themselves and kept up with you? Do they have common sense (which is not common anymore!) or even your best interest at heart?
Not in my “reality”!

For this conversation, we’ll agree that we didn’t choose our family and that we’ve learned to live with what we got, so I feel very blessed that I have one family member who I would choose as a friend. And that’s where I rejoin you with the real “bullshit busters”: Your friends.
The friends that you pick (the good one at least) will call you on stuff because they grow with you and support your well-being. They will also support you in your dreams, aspirations, and growth without an agenda or baggage from your common past.

And if or when they stop doing that, they slowly dwindle away, to be replaced by new ones.